Andy Robustelli heard that query quite a bit during his time in the NFL. It was a fair question. Many Connecticut residents were unaware of the tiny physical education college on Point Beach in Milford. To pro football players, spawns of every big-time university from Syracuse to Spokane, Arnold College sounded more like some Sherry-swilling frat boy in his seventh senior year.

By the time Robustelli's 14-year career was finished in 1964, Arnold College had been shuttered for over a decade, a victim of financial problems and absorbed as part of the University of Bridgeport. Fact is, the pleasant little school on the beach produced a trio of pro football players -- two of whom are in the Hall of Fame -- along with some of the most successful high school coaches the region, perhaps even the country, has ever seen.

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"People might not remember it, but I'll tell you, they don't know what they missed," said Vito Montelli, the winningest basketball coach in state history and a junior at Arnold when it closed its doors for good in 1953. "So much time has passed since it closed. But people of influence all over New England are from Arnold."

Never to be confused with Yale, Arnold College's 32-year existence was nomadic. Founded in 1921 in downtown New Haven, it moved to New York for a period before "settling" on Long Island Sound in Milford. While it may not have produced any U.S. Presidents or Nobel Prize winners, it boasts an incredibly rich athletic tradition.

There was Robustelli, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, and Ansonia's Allan Webb, who joined Robustelli on the New York Giants. New Haven's George Dixon, displaced by the school's closing, joined the Army before finishing his career at Bridgeport and heading to Canada. He is a member of the Canadian Fooball Hall of Fame.

Arnold athletic teams were competitive, often beating colleges with enrollments that dwarfed its roughly 500. Tuffie Maroon, before he took over at Quinnipiac, was a professor of English and the basketball coach. Bridgeport's Alvin Clinkscales starred on the school's final team. He later signed a contract with the Harlem Globetrotters and enjoyed great success coaching basketball at Notre Dame-Fairfield. Montelli was there too, not playing much, he says, but watching and learning from Maroon.

The baseball team had some pedigree, too. Ray Stoviak, once a major league outfielder with the Philadelphia Phillies, coached football and baseball. Hamden's Eddie Wilson, leading the National League in hitting when he was beaned in the head in 1936, later joined the staff as an assistant. The team went 19-1 in 1947; Robustelli, a third baseman known for his mammoth home runs -- legend has it he bashed 500-foot shots at Wesleyan and St. Michael's -- was offered a minor league contract by the New York Giants.

But it was football, a sport revived at Arnold only after it had been dropped during World War II, that led Robustelli to stardom. A Stamford native who served in the Navy during the War, he was dangerous pass-catcher and fierce tackler, named to the Associated Press' Little All-American team.

About the only person who noticed was Lou DeFilippo, a former star at Hillhouse, Fordham and the New York Giants who was scouting the Eastern region for the Rams at the time. DeFilippo raved about Robustelli's potential. The Rams listened and dispatched a coach to catch Arnold's game at St. Michael's College in Vermont. Robustelli caught six passes and blocked a couple of punts. He also broke his leg.

"They carried me off on a stretcher," Robustelli once told the Register. "But Lou had passed on such a glowing report to the Rams that they drafted me anyway."

Robustelli, who'd never been west of Stamford, spent five years in Los Angeles before a trade to New York. He made seven Pro Bowls as a defensive end and played in six NFL championship games including the Giants 1956 title team. In 1971, he was enshrined in Canton.

Arnold College wasn't so lucky. Financial troubles got the best of the college in 1953. Montelli recalls the school's president calling a meeting of the student body on a perfectly manicured lawn overlooking the water to announce the school had gone under. Like most students, he took up Bridgeport's offer to allow displaced students to finish degrees there.

"It's too bad they couldn't make a go of it," Montelli said. "They had so much land. If they promoted it properly, I really think it could have been a big-time university. They just needed better leadership. But, it worked out well for a lot of us."